Our Week in the Forest...
This week has seen the colours of our surroundings change dramatically with the green leaves of our enormous Plane Tree suddenly turning into glorious oranges, reds and browns carpeting the path to our forest area. Combined with the blue skies that we’ve had this week and the bright green grass sprouting on our recovering grassland area, it has been a particularly beautiful time to be learning and playing outside together.
The climbing trees have been enjoyed thoroughly this week, with different ropes and contraptions creating a multitude of opportunities to escape the reaches of sea monsters, climb like cats, be police officers or just hang out with your friends. It’s wonderful to see the claims of ‘I can’t’ turn into excited exclamations of ‘I did it!’ as they are encouraged to problem-solve themselves, help each other and just have a go.
Using the recent addition of a hammock to our wilderness area, some children spent a whole afternoon being caterpillars turning into butterflies and then hatching out of their cocoons. Navigating taking turns in the hammock (which only has room for two caterpillars) and with the older children helping the younger children, caterpillar after caterpillar cocooned themselves up in the hammock. Our Little Forest Folk-ers waited until a moment we weren’t expecting it and then each burst out as a beautiful butterfly, causing much laughter and delight to all the onlookers.
It has also been a week of great entrepreneurship, with a variety of food shops and restaurants being opened at the mud kitchen. The ice cream parlour in our ivy-covered den has been a particular favourite, with flavours ranging from ‘yellow mango with gingerbread on top’ to ‘leaf soup ice cream’. Many chocolate and banana mud-cakes have also been baked and the addition of some trowels to our resource box has provided opportunity for sourcing some new mud-based ingredients from the forest floor. We look forward to what culinary delights we may be experiencing from the mud kitchen next week!
For now however, we’re rounding off our week in the forest with another dinner around the fire - surely the best way there is to end another week of fun, play, exploration, learning and adventure.
Have a lovely weekend and we will see you all again next week!
Little Forest Folk
Twickenham